4 realistic tips for local SEO growth in 2019

Local SEO services is often a gray area for business owners and marketers, as they often wonder "what is the difference between organic and local SEO growth?" And, with the constantly changing local search rules, it can be incredibly difficult for business owners and internal marketing teams to stay ahead of the curve.

In short, local SEO is a form of an organic SEO strategy, which is used to target the areas in which a company operates and to grow the online presence of a company within a specific locality. It's a way for small businesses to compete in an extremely competitive online environment, without having to rely on expensive outreach campaigns or the monthly services of a digital marketing agency.

The points below describe four factors that are vital to the success of any local SEO campaign in 2019, addressing the realistic steps necessary to ensure that your local SEO is as optimized as possible:

SEO on the page

It is possible that many small business owners can not commit to the services of an SEO consultant. However, this does not mean that local SEO growth is not unattainable.

The SEO on the page refers to the additions that the owner of a website puts on each page of your website to facilitate the work of the search engines. When it comes to local SEO, it is vital to focus first on the following factors:

Title tags: when used correctly, title tags are incredibly effective in guiding the keywords you want to target. As the owner of a small or local business, it is important to understand the fine line between title tags and over-optimization.

For example, 'Plumbers | Manchester 'as title tag lacks keywords, while' Best Manchester Plumbers in Manchester Highest Rated Best Manchester Plumbers' is too optimized. So how can you make sure your title tags keep search engines happy in 2019? Make sure that the keywords you use are relevant and useful for the search engine.

Ensuring that title tags are no longer than a maximum of 70 characters is also essential, otherwise they will be cut off within the search results.

Meta descriptions: it is not strictly a classification factor, meta descriptions must include the keyword (s) you are selecting as a confidence signal and a conversion rate optimization method. With Google often changing the character limit, the recommended length may change again in 2019, however, to be sure, be sure to keep between 130-155 characters of relevant and well-optimized text.

Local landing pages

What exactly is a local destination page? Local pages are an incredibly effective way for business owners to focus on their areas of operation (and even some of them).

The landing pages must be written with the search engine in mind, and they must be unique. If done well, this tactic can continue to work well in 2019 and beyond. Check out these top tips from the local landing page:

·         Ensure a minimum of 500 words.

·         Internal link to service pages

·         Include tags and images <h2> (with alternative text)

·         Just write a maximum of 6 pages.

·         Optimize title tags and meta descriptions

·         Link to local websites to increase relevance

·         Make sure the outline code is added to each page

·         Link to your Google My Business profile

Local appointments and publications

Local online newspaper quotes and directory websites have existed for years, and while they still have relevance to local SEO, there is an even more important factor that will continue to grow in 2019 due to the relevance of the link: local news publications.

Google knows that any owner of a website can simply register in a directory and achieve a back link, therefore, the amount of manual back links that can be added to a site and still achieve effectiveness certainly decreases quickly.

Consider this: if you are a local barber in Manchester and appear in a relevant Manchester online publication, the link is much more contextual and, even if you have had to pay for it, it will be much more natural and superior. Quality than a manual presentation of directory.

Search local publications online in your area and contact them to obtain a guest publication or a sponsored article. If you have a link building budget, consider sponsoring a local sports team or an event for a permanent back link tracking on your site.

Internal links and site architecture

Before delving into this final point, let's see what internal links and site architecture are, and why it's particularly important for small business owners from the start.

Internal links are a way for search engine crawlers to discover how the content of your website is linked. The more natural an internal linking strategy is, the better the "flow" of the site will be. Essentially, a great internal linking strategy will greatly facilitate the work of the search engines.

Site architecture refers to how your site is distributed to both users and search engines. The biggest culprit in a poor site architecture is the site menu. If a menu is messy, badly thought or does not make sense, the search engines will crawl once and will not bother to return.

These two factors are so important because, with good site architecture and internal link additions, you can rank your website without spending thousands of dollars on link building and outreach campaigns. And, for small business owners with a local SEO strategy, what is better than saving money and sorting at the same time?

The points below are practical tips that can be used to ensure that your internal linking, content and menu structures are perfect for users, as well as search engines that track (and eventually position) your website:

·         When targeting a service, create subcategories to further target the long-tail keywords associated with the top-level page.

·         Make sure that the anchor text for internal links is natural. Pasting the main keyword, you want to classify on your site will not delete it in 2019.

·         Make sure your site map is not inflated and there are no marked errors in the Google Search Console.

·         Block any duplicate URL in the robots.txt file on your site.

·         Make sure your URLs are readable, especially at the subcategory level as you start targeting longer keywords.

Local SEO does not need to be complicated, however, it needs a carefully considered approach. The above tips provide a good start to making moves in local search results in 2019.